Whether you want to establish yourself as an expert in your field, or simply connect with your followers, holding a Twitter chat is a great way to interact with your community.
A Twitter chat—a scheduled chat session tethered by a universal hashtag—allows you to better understand and grow your clientele, in addition to promoting your business. Why a chat? The unique hashtag enables you to follow one long discussion. These chats are often recurring, and can be advertised within your community. For instance, you could send out a newsletter or Facebook status that reads, join my Twitter chat on Friday at 2 p.m. with the hashtag #MortgageMatters. Be sure to include your Twitter handle, your unique hashtag designed specifically for the chat, and the time the chat will be taking place.
A successful Twitter chat allows you to:
- Position yourself as the voice of authority. By asking and answering questions, you can showcase your wealth of knowledge, as well as direct followers back to your website, blog, or additional social media handles.
- Get instant feedback: Twitter chats usually follow a Q&A format, where you ask a question and either provide answers yourself, or listen to the answers of your community members. Questions could be bus dev related, like “What's your top real estate tech tool?” or “What's your favorite method of lead generation?” They can also be industry related, like “What do you think is our biggest industry challenge at the moment?”
- Expand your online presence: Twitter chats are tethered to one unique hashtag, but they are still housed in a public domain. This means as your followers respond to your chat, their participation shows up on their Twitter feed and reaches all of their followers, meaning hundreds of new people will learn about your brand each time you embark on a chat.
- Grow your community: Twitter chat is extremely engaging, and if you make it a weekly thing, your followers will begin to show up weekly to interact with you. Soon, you will have established yourself as a voice of industry knowledge.
- Offer content and support: By opening up a dialogue, your followers and customers will turn to you for answers to their questions, which will put you forefront in their minds when it comes time for them to make a real estate transaction.
Before you get started:
- Participate in a few chats. Gain an understanding of the chat format by seeking out and participating in a few other Twitter chats. See what other industry professionals are doing, and decide what works and doesn't.
- Consider a platform. While you can create a Twitter chat directly from the Twitter website or app, Twitter chat platforms like Nurph can help house your chat in one place so that your conversation is organized and streamlined.
- Pick your hashtag. Choose your hashtag very carefully, as it will be where you house your chats. If you decide on a hashtag, search Twitter to make sure it's unique and not already in use. Make sure the hashtag is short, easy to remember, and easy to spell.
- Promote it. A Twitter chat will be unsuccessful if no one shows up. A week or two before your chat, start spreading the word.
If hosting a successful Twitter chat is on your real estate to-do list, follow these tips to get the conversation started. Have any pointers you'd like to share? Sound off in the comments section below!
Zoe Eisenberg is RISMedia’s Associate Editor. She dreams of one day owning her own 400-square-foot tree house.
